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Seven beneficiaries. Seven people who stood to gain a huge amount of money, for a reason none of them yet understood.
Seven strangers receive a mysterious note informing them of their impending inheritance of billionaire Logan Quick’s fortune. They each receive a token and soon embark on a doomed cruise where they will have to conquer their own demons, and each other, for a chance at the money.
But someone on this boat has something to hide.
Can the survivors work out the truth… or are they destined to drown?
My thanks to the tour organiser Tracy of Compulsive Readers for the invite and the ecopy to review. The Token was published on 6 November 2025 by Orion and is available in ebook, audio and hardback formats, with the paperback to follow in July 2026. I’ve read most of Sharon Bolton’s books and some reviews are on this blog – just type her name into the search bar.
MY THOUGHTS
Setting the scene for this story is the dramatic prologue. A yacht caught in a ferocious storm heading to the Scilly Isles leaves the reader wondering who will survive. We then go back in time to learn about the occupants, their background and why they are on the boat.
Seven strangers each receive a letter and a coin token with instructions to keep the token safe as it will enable the holder to claim a share of billionaire Logan Quick’s fortune upon his death. One of the instructions is to tell no-one else however as you can guess, word soon gets out with journalists door stepping and the seven strangers finding themselves under seige. Whilst some people were excited about the thought of having enough money to make dreams come true, for others it seemed like a curse.
Whilst the story had a tense and at times sinister background, it could be described as a slow burner with the individual stories taking up a good part of the book. Whilst this did allow the reader to get to know and in some cases care about the personalities – including a paramedic, a wedding planner, a barrister with a secret life and a woman under the controlling thumb of her mother, I was keen (and rather impatient) to get to the nub of why these seven. None of them knew of a connection to Logan Quick nor did they have any connection to each other. Credit to the author for making these characters ones that you can feel empathy for despite some of their more obvious flaws. They all had a reason for needing the money but would they ever receive it?
Set over a two week period, it was the promise of the payoff that kept me invested and I was definitely intrigued enough to keep reading. There was always an element of danger and the writing and twisted plotting was as good as you would expect from this awesome author. I will always read whatever Sharon Bolton writes and whilst The Token is not my favourite Bolton thriller, I did enjoy the suspense and intrigue. Also as much as I love cruising on large ships, nothing would make me get on a small boat in a storm. 😳
At the time of writing this post The Token is available to download for 99p on Amazon UK
Sharon (formerly S J) Bolton lives in Buckinghamshire with her husband and, occasionally, her grown up son and is working on her eighteenth novel; her eighth with Orion.
Her first book, Sacrifice, was voted Best New Read by Amazon.uk, whilst her second, Awakening, won the 2010 Mary Higgins Clark Award (part of the prestigious Edgars) in the US. In 2014, she won the CWA Dagger in the Library. She has been shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger, the CWA Steel Dagger, the Theakston’s Prize for Best Thriller, the International Thriller Writers’ Best First Novel award, the Prix Du Polar in France and the Martin Beck award in Sweden.
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